Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah! Got an urge, got a surge, and it's out of control Got an urge I wanna purge, 'cause I'm losing control Uncontrollable urge, I wanna tell you all about it Got an uncontrollable urge, it makes me scream and shout it Melt Banana - Uncontrollable Urge (covering Devo) (Note: This thread is parallel to Phoenix Team: Burning down the House) Sargasso, Barrier Island, Outside Barrier Island Medical A languid and dry afternoon, with clouds coming in for the evening. Johnny Longhands and Ally Kelly were citizens of Sargasso in on the context of the city's appointed champions, the Phoenix Team. They lacked the raw combat potential and prowess of Phoenix Team's core hires, but they were citizens who supported their local the best way they could. Johnny was a purveyor of hardware and tools, while Ally was a waitress at the Hero's Arms, and a new shift had just opened. "Ah, shit." Ally shook her head, putting her cascading ponytail aside to read her communicator. "What?" Johnny, with a vaporiser in his mouth. "I need to be at work to cover some shifts." Ally sighed, looking down and snapping her comms shut. "Some of us can't come in because of Tanhauss screwing with people's limbs... how can Tanhauss even do that and not feel guilty for it?" "When you get big enough," Johnny said, exhaling a cloud and shivering as his neurons registered the narcotic stimuli. "A million lives disrupted becomes just another cost of doing business." Indeed, one of the aftershocks of Gruppen Tanhauss' new malice for its consumers in Sargasso was a rolling clusterfuck of trouble: Bionic limbs were no longer synchronised or connected with external rights-management services - at best becoming totally unresponsive and at worst taking control of their users to further a destructive agenda. Hospitals host to Tanhauss tech were suddenly compromised and backdoored - terrabytes of medical records turning corrupt as their tech departments worked overtime to restructure and purge the pharma-giant's trojans. Johnny's commercial mind figured there'd be an uptick in non-Tanhauss bionic limbs very soon, and made a note to diversify when he restocked. "Need a lift?" he asked, walking over to his beat-up lorry parked across the street. The lettering on the back cabin was plain: 'JOHNNY LONGHANDS - MERCHANT' in an inoffensive sans-serif font. He stood out from the passenger side door on the left, extending his noodly bionic arm to open the door for her. "It's wild out there." "Oh aren't you a gentleman - Sure thing!" She stepped up and sat in the old fabric and sponge bench seating. Johnny followed around to the driver's side and hopped in, thumb-keying the engine on and getting rolling. Sargasso, Barrier Island, The Hero's Armaments Pulling up into the carpark and finding a space, Johnny parked and killed the engine, stepping out and taking in the beachside breeze. The beach looked ... emptier than usual. When Ally disembarked, she asked the merchant: "I thought you were heading back to your shop?" "I haven't eaten all day." Johnny, patting his stomach. Ally shrugged and rolled with it as she stepped under the verandah and through the double doors. Patronage at the restaurant was lower than usual for a weekday afternoon, and the atmosphere among the patrons present, contrasting the surrounding colourful flags from the societies and cultures scattered across dozens of star systems - was dour. Spills and trouble had occurred and Ally saw where she was needed immediately. "Joe, where's the head chef gone?" Ally said as she was slipping into an apron, peering into the service area behind the bar and over the bald head of the owner. "Tanhauss limbs." He explained, expression dour. Joe the Barman was a stocky, stoic Greaseheart human with a furrowed brow, a stubbly jaw, and a shiny head, wearing an apron and bowtie as signs of cybernetics lead from under his shirt and up to his jaw. "You can figure out the rest." Johnny took a seat at the bar and ordered a middy of beer to get started, followed by a packet of crisps. "I know how you feel - It's got the whole town on edge, man." He said after downing half the glass in one go. "Bad for business everywhere." "At least we're safe - I just can't imagine what Brigmoore's going through." Joe replied, referring to the absent head chef. "How bad?" Johnny, hearing the barman out - a few of his clients had these dead-weight wetware strapped to them too. Joe shook his head and exhaled. "He had a quad, and most of his torso. Two left arms, two right arms." Which explained why Brigmoore was such a force to be reckoned with in the kitchen. "If he dumped them, he's limbless, and maybe missing organs. Its no way to live - and for who's sake?" "Fucking Tanhauss, man." Johnny concurred, cursing into the remaining beer indistinctly. "At least Phoenix Team and the Units' are sticking to them the only way a bunch of belligerent assholes would learn from." Joe figured, seeing the silver lining to it. Johnny smiled, knowing he was, in his own way, helping them. "I'll drink to that. Another, Joe." And the Hero's Armaments begun its uneasy shift in the afternoon, as the town was engulfed in a myriad of corporate-inflicted crises. Anyone not in the path of the worst of it would've wanted to head somewhere stable, like the Armaments - worry and anxiety like this sapped people of their want to look out for themselves. Beer? There was plenty here. Food? Well - the menu today was significantly cut back, but they'd cook it for you if you had the money. Prices were discounted out of sympathy.
Johnny finished his second beer, contemplating how the day's events would unfold with such colourful events unfolding around him. The temptation to stay a little longer crossed his mind, but the hours he set were the hours he set, and the auto-merch couldn't handle all the unusual requests that passed his pads. Ally and Joe had settled into the rhythm of work. "Right, I'll see you later." Mr. Longhands said, putting some currency on the bar. "Do pop in." On the way out Johnny brushed past a Belza and something walking on four spindly legs with a glassy eye in its centre. The two aliens were chattering to each other in a hyperactive quint. The Belza was a metallic humanoid with a glass head, filled with swirling smoke and lights. The other alien was a crude: a ball of roiling plastics ensconced in an articulated iron shell, with additional arms projecting from its sides. "Why are we here, again?" The belza projected from a voicebox, colours brimming beneath their helmet turning purple as their annoyance rose with how long the trip was. That dude with the long metal arms seemed suspicious to them as well. "Because its where all the interesting people go, so said the marketing." The crude replied, absolutely chipper as they made their way into the bar - which was still rather quiet for what'd ordinarily be peak hour. Ally was cleaning an emptied table when she saw them. The Belza rolled their eyes. "Putty, we get only one weekend off a month and we're on the other side of town?" They lived not far from the major spaceport, and to get to the metropolitan area they had to cross several kilometres of bridge across the archipelago of Sargasso. "This had better be as good as you say." "If it doesn't we can blame the ads for setting us up, Resty." Putty deflected as they were eyeing around for a seat close to the viewscreen - which was currently projecting the results of a frame run that'd taken place out in the ocean. Speed-optimised mecha twirled and thrust themselves through the air, leaving wakes against the ocean surface where the displaced air met the water. Someone from the Cloverbark Team was show-boating for the camera by skimming a toe along the surface and fighting against its tension to figure skate - pirouette, landing on the right foot and hair-cutter spinning on its toe before striking a pose - the machine's articulation and unrestrained movement was eye-catching. Resty whistled. "I'd love to work on one of those at least once." Something other than working on odd-job plumbing at homes and apartments across Sargasso would've really spiced their working life up. "We need more than what's in the back of our van to work on a frame..." The crude replied, sentence of thought rolling away as the waitress approached and asked for orders. "Oh, uhhh. I'll have the hydrocarbo-gelati, concrete and rust flavour." Not even a shimmer of doubt: It was their favourite flavour. "Very good. And the belza?" The waitress turned her attention to the gaseous alien, "We have helium blends down -here-." Tapping the digital menu at an edge and paging it tpwards a few possibilities palatable for Belza physiology. "Helium/Tritium tinnie, please." Resty said, handing the menu over. "Thank you ma'am." "You're welcome." Ally replied as she headed over with the order. Once she was back to the kitchen and handing the written order over, she verbally confirmed. "Carbojelly, conc and rust and a can of helium-tritium for a belza. Can you handle it?" The under-staffed kitchen could - carbo-jelly kept for a long time and just needed to be hot and runny upon serving, while feeding Belza was always relatively straightforward once you had the gas blends worked out. In the meantime, Putty and Resty kept watching footage the frame running practice out in Sargasso's ocean, oogling the mecha performing aerial slaloms and other death-defying manoeuvres once they realised they were on film.
